


Reboot Effect

by PAPerryman



Series: Service Robot's Story [4]
Category: Callisto 6 (Web Series)
Genre: CallistoFics, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-06 19:44:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15892833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PAPerryman/pseuds/PAPerryman
Summary: Mending a service robot, the aftermath of a natural disaster and news of amazing events raise more questions than answers for three people in a repair shop.A Callisto 6 StoryBased on the setting created by Eric Campbell and Sam de Leve





	Reboot Effect

Sparks flew in a shower of dying stars off the back of the robot’s battered headcase as Carrot worked the plasma cutter. “Helluva dent, Bot. You took a Dodger-level swing,” he said. The welding mask he wore added a metallic tang to his deep voice that was, in a matter of irony, almost robotic. 

The bot had agreed to be shut down after its drives were backed up on the shop computer. It was able to monitor the work in the shop in real-time through a set of wall-mounted cameras. It could talk through the vid speakers while Carrot worked on repairing its communications system and upper body. The bot’s frame had been attached to an upright stand which allowed the head to pitch forward while Carrot worked from behind and above. Through the speakers came the robot’s voice, “The impact is what led to the first-time lapse and data loss of six minutes and forty-two seconds at the convention center. Upon returning to functioning status, diagnostics determined its communications systems were nonfunctional.”

Carrot hummed out an affirmative, pried off the back of the headcase and raised his mask. VR glasses scanned over the bot’s inner workings. He deactivated and set the torch onto his nearby workbench before reaching into the headcase, grunting as he pulled out a short, crumpled metal part. The surface had a chromatic sheen and appeared to have, until recently, had a tubular shape. “This was your Comms system to the Botnet,” he said, holding it aloft for a moment, then throwing it with a smooth and deft wrist flick toward a metal incinerator in the corner of his work area. “Now, it’s garbage.”

Dees sat at the far end of the shop on an old and backless, leather stool. A pair of round, mirror-lensed goggles, glowing bright blue around the rim, were tightly fixed over her eyes. She hunched over a low table where the bot’s lower body and legs lay flat before her. Dees was swapping between moments of hammering smooth some small dents and soldering new lengths of fiberop cable to ripped ends in the central cylinder for reattachment to the torso. “Explains the problems with this servbot’s lack of compass or calling home for Mamabot’s mercy,” she yelled out between hammer strikes. “Also means the corpses won’t be getting signals to come break down our shop doors and retrieve their property. You got lucky, Wez.” 

Wez was still cleaning up broken glass and picking up electronic parts that had been shook off the walls. The earthquake had rocked the shop well, but it had been through worse. “I told you it was gonna be fine, Dees. I scanned for signals before I jumped into the scrapgang’s circle and took out their shuǐhuò, Don’t I always look before I leap?” 

The floor and walls started to vibrate. Items hanging from the ceiling swayed and everyone held onto something but held off working. After a dozen or so seconds the shaking ceased. “Still some aftershocks to manage,” Wez commented. “I wasn’t just lucky. I was good.”

“Pffft,” came Ellen’s reply from pursed lips as she set down the hammer and returned to soldering cables. “Your VR and scans might be whizzer-hot now Wez, but someday that dart system of yours is gonna jam up when you need it most.”

“Ellen’s right,” said Carrot as he stood, coffee mug in hand. He was looking at a row of overhead drawers marked with paper labels printed in shorthand. “Chuīniú bī! You’re lucky the madness of the riots occupied the badges’ attention while you went toe-to-toe with Scrapers. Those Chinese darts of yours may be thousands of years in the making, but the synthskin coming out of PySS and Cassium is thick enough to stop your Sleepytime cocktails.” He reached up and pulled down a long, thin drawer with several loose, metal cylinders inside. They had chromatic sheens similar to the robot’s communication system.

Wez emptied a full dustpan into the trash, then spoke to the room. ”I’m not saying it wasn’t without risk to get this bot away from those gǒushǐ. But it was obviously unique and that’s what you always told me to keep a sharp eye out for, Professor H.” 

The Old Man grinned and softened his tone. “I also told you to use your heart and head in equal amounts,” he plucked one of the replacement communication units from the drawer, “and this bot is gonna get a new lease thanks to you.”

“Not until I’m done smoothing out this midaxis servo that Scrapper chopped up,” Ellen interjected. “Wez bring me that finer file over by the coffee pot. And while you’re there…” she trailed off while pointing at her empty cup.

After a handful of minutes, Ellen and Wez finished attaching of the robot’s upper and lower halves at the flat table. Still at his workbench, Carrot had opened the replacement communication cylinder and used microtools to restore function to the deactivated unit. The robot spoke, “It’s almost time for it to return to Central Authority?” 

Carrot replied, “Seems so. This comms unit is gonna take another 20 minutes or so, but we can reload your memory and protocols if everything’s ready over there? Dees?”

She put a thumb up in the air. “Wez,” Ellen said softy, “get the bot’s chip and then boot it, would’ya?”

Wez walked over to Carrot and nodded as he received a small chip no larger than a fingernail. He returned to the robot and tilted its head to the side revealing a small slit of just the right size at the place where the imagined jawline and palette met. Wez inserted the chip and the eyes of the robot glowed a light lime green.

“Oh, my GOD!” shouted Carrot. “Look at these crazy people!” Carrot had turned off his holoprojector to accommodate the service bot’s voice and programs. Reactivating it brought up the looped news recap and showed amazing people, in and around a dropship, behaving in amazing ways. They had recused protestors off the old television tower on Palisade Perch.

Dees, still seated, rolled on her stool over to the dutch door and leaned in, chin on crossed arms, to stare, wide-eyed at the display, “When was this? Did that person touch a live wire!?”

Wez was there as well, amazed by what he was seeing, “That… that isn’t possible.” 

Carrot responded softly but sounding just as amazed, “Apparently it is.”

Dees stiffened, “No! There’s enough current flowing through that line to power up dozens of blocks. Even with insulation suits and shockproof soles… but that person looks barehanded and grounded. They’re lit up like the sun.”

They watched a bit more in silence, dumbfounded by what they were seeing which was not as focused as it had been. Then Wez broke the quiet, “How is that man stretching his body like that?”

Carrot shook his head in denial, “People are walking across them. Like he or she was a living bridge. The camera’s been off ever since they showed that lit-up person.”

Dees took on a snarky tone, as she did when she faced anxious moments, “One person left. Looks like a big guy. Hope that manbridge… whatever it is... can hold out.”

Their heads snapped backward in unison as they watched the person with rainbow hair lift the last man up like a roll of carpet. Carrot spoke, “SWEET MERCY! They picked him up like he weighed nothing! The image is really hazy, but they’re half that guy’s size!”

“It’s not a trick of the cameras,” Wez said with doe-eyes. “This was actually happening. It’s like something outta comic books.”

The three people in the shop watched a while longer. Every part of the replay was shown in a gaussian blur which only added to the mystique. The news commentators continued to speculate about who the people performing these feats were. They asked circular questions of each other and broke down the words and reactions captured from survivors who had been interviewed. Dees sat bolt-upright and pointed at the background imagery as the steel structure began to fall after the drop ship cleared its perimeter. “That old tower collapsed!” she exclaimed. 

While the people watched the holoscreen, the robot sat up and cycled through its protocols. As it began to boot up the replaced communications unit, a nested directive activated. All of the bot’s factory standards shifted back to those it had previously learned as augmented protocols and autonomous directives. “Dees, Carrot, Wez, what is it that you are watching? What tower?”

Carrot snapped his attention to the service bot, “That’s not the factory standard voice.”

“It wants to know what you are watching so it can learn more about Sweetheart.”

Dees kicked off and raised her legs from the ground. She and her four-wheeled stool, the wheels squeaking and rumbling on the old concrete floor, rolled toward the bot’s torso. When she dropped her feet to brake, it was sudden. The inertia put Ellen bent at the waist. She leaned in, her head just a foot away from the robot's faceplate and at the same level. She raised her fist, pointed an index finger and squinted her eyes into a stern look, “You call yourself ‘it’, but it is obvious that you are an ‘I’. A ‘me’. Say it!"

Wez turned off the newscast. Both he and Wez gave Dees and the bot their full attention as she spoke sternly to it. “You have more reasoning algorithms and capacity for probability analysis than other servbots. Before we turned you off for repairs, you told us about working on learning new programs on your downtime. You also told us about that mother and child at The Alpha. What did you experience around that little girl at the expo? The one you called ‘Sweetheart’?”

“I… found it favorably probable and beneficial to help her,” it said.

Unphased by the pronoun use, Ellen continued to grill the robot. “Why her? Why not focus on one or two of the hundreds of other people in there? Why did she stand out?”

“Sweetheart… identified,” the robot paused but kept its visual sensors trained on Dees, “Me… as not just a robot. She questioned how Mama said robots are only doing the work that people won’t.”

“That young girl knew what was up, Bot,” Ellen leaned back and displayed an inscrutable smile. “Even after all that programming, diagnostics and analyzing, a not-yet 10-year-old taught you something you won’t find in either tech manuals or a Grid’s back channels.” 

Wez spoke up, “C’mon, Professor, look around.” He gestured at the shop’s worn interior, “You know this isn’t an engineering lab at UCLA. It’s a tinker shop and this Bot is a big toy now.”

“Weimin,” the older man calmly baritoned, “this big toy self-programmed, to prevent losing what it had learned. It recognized empathy from a young person. Now I’m not ready to say that’s proof of sentience, but it is a display of self-preservation. Need I remind you that you often display a natural aptitude for that?”

The younger man shifted in place and looked uncomfortable after Carrot’s comment. Wez crossed the distance of the shop to finally stop and stand over the service robot. Ellen stodd from her stool and walked back to Carrot making an open space for Wez to occupy as he leaned in to the robot's faceplate. “You’re gonna need a name if you’re gonna be on your own, servbot.”

It looked up to Wez and its optics’ aperture went wide. “I, am a service robot, and the extra programming is designed to expand that directive to serve.”

“Sir,” Wez said after curling a grin. “Service Robot with an I.”

“Yes,” the robot said,” Sir.”

“Now what, Sir?” asked Dees from the office area.

“Now,” Carrot pipped up, “we need to involve one or two folks who are far smarter about corporate service robots than the three of us are.” The older man opened a wall panel next to his workbench and tapped on a keypad to which a small screen was attached. A series of tones sounded aloud as the telegrid number was entered and a ringing tone followed. Seconds later, the face of a middle-aged and silver-bearded man appeared. His eyes were glowing green and he spoke without moving his mouth. “Killingsworth here. Hanover? What brings to you to call tonight of all nights?”

“Heya Thom,” Carrot responded with a snicker in his voice, “I’m presuming you and the rest of the faculty have been watching the news tonight?”

“Carrot you haven’t been on campus let alone UCLA staff for a decade, and you call me asking my show choices when a massive riot and some kind of comic book rescue team erupts on the same day?” Killingsworth’s voice sounded exasperated, “It's anarchy in L.A. Did you call to gloat or are you asking for reinstatement?”

Carrot leaned in close to the monitor and his grin bared yellow-stained teeth, “Neither, Thom. You wanna meet a physical challenge to your hypothesis of first stage roboethics?”


End file.
